Sanity
by Delle Tuh
Summary: Bella is lonely despite her marriage. Edward helps to ease that loneliness she fights so desperately. Rated for Language and Sexual Situations. Reviews are most welcome.


**Disclaimer: **I do not own _Twilight _or it's affiliated characters.

**Sanity**

**Chapter One**  
_'Grasping'_

The house is alive with silence.

I feel it like a presence, a menacing torturer that finds such pleasure with its mocking, never-ending, deafening, noise-less pitch. It greets me like he doesn't but it's just as friendly.

Drop the purse, hang the keys and smell stale beer and cold, ordered much earlier, pizza. I decide to swipe a slice and guzzle the rest of the POM juice he loves so much right from the bottle and toss it in the recycling. Yearning for pajamas, I tread the thickly carpeted stairs with impatient, already bare, feet. I open the door slowly and flood in enough light to change, which is a very difficult process when layers, jewelry and a bucket ton of pins are in your hair.

I know I make too much noise like I know he drank too much- neither matter when his snores continue. But I catch his gorgeous face and remember when.

When love meant so many things it was overwhelming. When time, responsibility and money were worries for grownups. When happiness was abundant and full and just and oh so beautiful. Sighing, I kiss his cheek, murmur a wish for him as he was and make my way to my office.

I stretch rather vocally after entering my sanctuary, and relaxing, I close my eyes, smile, and there he is.

'Have a good day, Beautiful?'

The voice is like water to a parched mouth, and I whimper a groan in relief. Sweet relief.

'Should I take that as a no?'

I open my eyes then, and there he is.

I see his corporeal form beside my desk and my imagination is so over-worked that the details are so intricate and the depth is fathomless and I can almost believe he is real. I can almost believe he is there, for me, and the bitter sweetness of it constricts my throat.

His smile lights his face and mine. His eyes roam my sullen frame and his arms move anxiously- always and forever wishing me to fill them. I look away after so long for his beauty almost hurts with the inadequacy it places upon my uprooted self-esteem.

I stumble to the high-backed leather chair behind the desk and sink into its cushions with a sigh as I boot up my computer. The fans whir and the hardware beeps and the familiar sound grounds me to the moment, keeping me from falling to fast into the reverie that was and always will be Edward Cullen.

'Isabella.'

I look up and steal a glance at his diamond gold eyes, which are full of concern and worry and the one that always makes my heart stop like my blood's run suddenly cold and viscous like stew in my veins, love. They glisten and glow with it and it almost hurts, too.

'I've missed you.'

I bite my already abused and sore bottom lip and guilt washes through me because I've missed him, too. So much that suddenly the back of my eyes sting and my throat burns and I really don't want to cry.

"Work and school have been wearing me thin."

He's suddenly in front of me, standing between myself and my desk with his arms crossed and his backside resting against my keyboard. I back up a little and cough restlessly, wanting to refuse to look at him but succeeding in no way with the endeavor.

'That's not the only thing.'

My thoughts meander up the stairs and to the man lying in bed, wanting, but not waiting for me. My heart crumbles, my chest caves and suddenly my chair is too comfortable and my entire body goes limp. I stare through the space that I wish so desperately Edward occupied and my mind shuts down. I feel nothing.

'Stop that.'

I startle and suddenly I focus on my sane hallucination and he's leaning towards me, eyes intent and almost glowing gold.

"What?"

'Trying to make yourself numb.'

I sigh and rub my eyes with roughened fingers.

'He is hurting you. Feel it, Bella, fight it.'

His voice is hard and it almost grates me. But I grind my teeth, push away from him and begin pacing the abused hardwood floor that runs along my just as abused book shelves.

"You know, Edward, having come from me you'd think you'd have a better understanding of who I am."

'Yes, and who you are is being damaged by that infuriating being upstairs who has no idea how very truly blessed he really is.'

I shake my head. I hate having these conversations with him. If I wanted to argue I'd wake up my husband, whose snores I can almost hear through the walls that separate us.

"I don't want to do this tonight, Edward."

I push my tired, too warm face into my hands and sigh. This was everything I didn't need tonight. I want to tell him to leave, to shut up, to stop making things so difficult when they were already almost impossible. I feel tears, warm and wet, coursing down my cheeks and I am so mad at this fact that my hands shake as I press them harder to my eyes, seeing stars beneath the lids.

'I'm sorry, Bella.'

His voice is so close it scares me and when I look up from my damp hands there he is, standing so close I would have felt his breath, his body heat…if he were only real. That simple fact makes the tears fall faster and a sob breaks through the wall I've built around myself and the look in his eyes then is one I will never forget.

His hand reaches up and his fingers flex, tendons standing out in relief next to his pale skin. His jaw is clenched and his eyes are hard, like solidified gold. I swallow thickly and no matter how badly I wish to look away I simply can't.

'You have no idea…' he whispers, but I know what he is going to say. It is the same words he always says in times like these, when mere words are not enough and physical contact would give us everything that both of us would ever need.

'It is so frustrating, Bella. To want you so fucking badly and not be able to even touch the softness of your cheek, or feel the fullness of your lips, the curve of your waist. To be able to comfort you. To love you. I want to kill Jacob for taking everything he has for granted. I would do absolutely anything to be in his position…and he wastes it all away. '

Tears glisten in his eyes, but never fall. I wish for his strength.

'I was made to love you, Bella. And to watch you waste yourself on a man who can't even take care of your basic human needs…'

He looks away then and out of the darkened window. He bites his bottom lip and I see the indents his teeth make. I wish so much then to grab him and hold him and feel him and comfort him like he wishes he could for me.

My heart aches and I can't make it stop.

"Can I be selfish?"

His eyes are blazing when they snap back to my face.

'What?'

"Can we just be together tonight? I promise to talk about…Jacob, at a later date. I've had a long, trying day, and I'm tired, and I just want you."

His lifts his hand to my cheek then and I almost feel it.

'I'll give you all of me I possibly can, Bella.'

I close my eyes and nod before making my way to the overstuffed couch in my office and lying down. I feel him walk around me, and I know this is how it starts, and how it will always end.

'Touch yourself, Isabella.'

I sigh from the authority in his voice and the octave gives me chills.

My body is a live wire and my hands are not my own for they are not doing what I am telling them to, they are doing what he is telling them to. My fingers move and twist and my voice raises and moans and it's all because of him.

He watches as he drives me to the peak, his hand, my hand, our hand, buried between my legs and making me feel things that Jacob never has before. Edward forces me to watch him, and when that one finalized moment happens and I break apart and reappear, his eyes are glued to mine, captivated by this moment he has made for me.

I fall asleep on the leather couch in my office that night with Edward murmuring sweet nothings into my ear, and I can almost feel his hand stroking the length of my hair.

I don't even wish it was Jacob.

**Author's Note: **So if I receive enough reviews, I may continue with this. I have a brief outline of this story in my head and the theme with be sanity and what constitutes as being sane or insane. And how often those lines can truly be blurred. This is my first attempt at an All Human, if you want to call it that. And I am very excited about the story. Review if you want more!


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